


Undone

by Nova42



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 14x14, Brotherly Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s14e14 Ouroboros, ouroboros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-15 09:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18070568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nova42/pseuds/Nova42
Summary: "All of our friends, all the people we...they're all dead. Does that make us legends, or just some kind of failed martyrs?" Episode tag for 14x14 Ouroboros. Covers a few missing scenes.





	1. Failed Martyrs

 

"Guys!" Sam shouted, attempting to push down the rapidly raising panic in his chest. "Hey! Wake up, Dean!" He dug his knuckles into Dean's sternum, without so much as a flinch from his unconscious brother. "Cas!" He turned back toward the angel.

Cas pushed himself up off the floor and quickly covered the distance. He knelt at Sam's side and pressed two fingers against Dean's forehead. Lines creased his forehead as he concentrated.

Sam looked between his brother and the angel with wide eyes. The angel's healing powers were supposed to be instant, damage undone in no longer than a quick blink. "Cas?"

Castiel shook his head, drawing his hand away from Dean. "I . . . I can't heal him."

Sam's breath caught painfully in his chest. "Is he . . ." He couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't even allow himself to finish the thought. That would make this too real. Dean was  _fine_. He  _had_  to be fine.

"I. . ." Cas raised his gaze, his face holding more worry then Sam had ever seen the angel show. "I don't know."

Dean made a sudden gagging sound and bucked up between them, a strangled grunt escaping through tightly clenched teeth.

"Dean!" Hope surged through Sam as his brother fought to sit up, and he moved to press a hand behind Dean's shoulder as he attempted to curl in on himself. That hope was crushed instantly as he realized his brother's eyes were still shut, that he seemed to be struggling against something or someone. "Hey, Dean!"

Dean fell back to the floor then arched up off the ground once more, tense limbs twisting and shifting as shudders ran through him. Sam grappled to steady him, desperate to keep his brother from injuring himself further. "Cas," he barked, and the angel reached out to hold Dean's bent, flailing arms as Sam attempted to brace his head.

Just as quickly as it started, Dean fell limply against the hardwood, like a puppet with its strings cut.

"What was that?"

Heart thudding, Sam turned his head as Rowena came into the room. She stopped short next to Jack, who looked just as lost and worried as the rest of them.

"I don't . . ." Sam looked back down to his immobile brother, hands hovering uselessly.

"Sam, if Michael—"

"We need to get him back the bunker," Sam said abruptly, not allowing Cas to finish. Dean would be  _fine_. He pulled one of his brother's arms over his shoulder, wincing as the man's head flopped forward. Cas wordlessly moved to help lift Dean up. "Rowena, can you take Jack back?" He knew it wasn't likely Rowena had any intention of following them all the way back to the bunker once the gorgon was killed, but Dean barely fit lying down in the Impala by himself. There was no way they could realistically cram another person in the back.

Rowena nodded faintly as they passed by her and made their way out to the car.

They laid Dean out carefully across the backseat of the Impala, cushioning his wounded head with a clean towel from the trunk. Sam gave his brother's prone form one last worried glance as he pulled out of the car, hoping against everything that Dean would snap awake and bitch at him for the worry, that he'd wipe the blood away on the leg of his jeans and crack a joke, and everything would be okay. But his brother remained still and unaware, unmoving.

He shut the door and slid behind the wheel, trying not to think about all the times he'd done this – driven the Impala when Dean was unable to. Sam shifted the car into drive and slammed his foot down on the gas, a spray of gravel flying from beneath the tires as he peeled out of the parking lot. At least the apartment building was on the outskirts of town; they wouldn't have to cut through the city before hitting the highway. He wasn't sure he'd have the restraint to keep from recklessly speed through the busy area.

Sam fidgeted in the driver's seat, gaze bouncing up to the rearview mirror every few moments to check on his brother. Dean's face remained lax, his bloody head rolling slightly as the car pushed forward. They should have patched the wound, done something to keep it from being open and vulnerable for the literal  _hours_ it would take them to reach the bunker.  _Moot point_ , Sam reminded himself firmly.  _He'll wake up. Cas will heal it before we hit the state line._ He nodded to himself, adjusted his grip on the steering wheel.  _Cas will –_

Cas was rotated awkwardly on the passenger side of the bench seat, keeping watch with wide eyes. Waiting, either for Dean to snap out of it, or for . . .

Sam pressed his foot harder against the pedal, willing the car to go faster.

Cas reached back to the backseat pressing his fingers against Dean's forehead in another attempt to heal him.

"Anything?" he asked, that bit of clinging hope fluttering once more in his chest.

The angel shook his head in frustration as he withdrew his hand. "No."

Sam twisted his hands around the steering wheel, remembering what Cas had told him before.  _It's not possible for an angel to heal an archangel._ But Dean wasn't an archangel, he just had one locked in his head. It was different, it  _had_ to be different. Dean would be fine, he just . . . he just had a concussion. That was all. This had nothing to do with Michael. Dean had always been all right. He would  _always_  be all right.

"Cas—" He was cut off by a strangled yell from the backseat and looked back to see Dean arching off the seat.

His head snapped back against the cushioned bench, but Sam flinched as though the impact had been against concrete. The muscles in Dean's neck strained, ad he cried out again as his body shuddered. Cas leaned over the seat and pressed a hand against Dean's chest in an attempt to keep him from rolling to the car floor.

Sam drove faster still, silently pleading with Dean as he forced himself not to look in the rearview and fought to ignore the sounds coming from his brother. Then Dean stopped moved, his hand thudding dully against the floormat as he fell limp, just as suddenly as he had in the apartment. It seemed to have lasted forever, but a glance at his watch confirmed the . . . whatever it was, had lasted only half the time as the first one. He wasn't sure what that meant for his brother. Didn't know whether that meant he was getting better or getting worse.

Sam dragged a hand down his face, then finally looked over his shoulder again at his brother. A slightly manic bubble of laughter tumbled pass his lips before he had a chance to stop it.

Cas raised an eyebrow at him. "Sam?"

"I was . . ." He swallowed thickly, trying to maintain focus on the road down with they were currently traversing at a hundred and three miles per hour. "Dean not waking up, having. . ." He shook his head, searching for the right word. "I just realized the best-case scenario here is serious head trauma." He sniffed back another choke of crazed, inappropriate laughter, then cleared his throat. "Never thought I'd be hoping for—" he cut himself off, wishing like hell that they didn't still have five hours of travel ahead of them. "He'll be okay, though." Sam nodded sharply, unsure who he was trying to convince. "I mean it's Dean."

Cas lips twisted into a frown, sadness clouding his features.

He'd been hoping for some assurance and confirmation, not . . . Sam couldn't help but wonder at what point the angel had become so achingly  _human_. "What?" he asked warily.

"Sam, Dean . . ." Cas paused, twisting once more to check on the hunter.

Sam followed his head. Without the ominous gash in the side of his forehead, his brother might have been sleeping.

"At the diner, Dean told me that Michael never stops pounding in his head, that he can't let down his guard even for a moment. That he barely even sleeps."

"What?" Sam had guessed about the pounding, knew that Michael, an archangel, wouldn't let up for a moment and wouldn't tire of railing against that door in Dean's mind. But the sleeping – that one he didn't know, and he should have.

"Sam, your brother is one of the strongest humans I have ever known, but he's still human. The stress his body and mind have been under these past weeks – months, even. It's not sustainable."

00000

Fire blazed through him, sending red-hot blasts into the base of his skull and down his spine. His head burned with a sort of relentless, all-encompassing fire he'd not known before this very moment. He struggled to remember where he was, why he was, anything that existed beyond the hot pain radiating throughout his entire being.

He fought like hell, his brain struggling to comprehend and defend. Misfired thoughts slipped through his fingers like shards of glass, shredding his consciousness until everything was reduced to a single thought.

_Michael._

The archangel was here nearby, somewhere. He was in the bar; he could hear the pounding on the door but couldn't  _see_  anything through the red-hot agony threatening to tear him apart. He had to find Michael, had to keep the archangel where he belonged, locked behind that door where he couldn't hurt anyone else.

Dean pushed himself off the ground on trembling arms. He stumbled dangerously once he found his feet, collided painfully with the edge of the bar as the banging in his head raised to a deafeningly painful level. He grabbed at his head with one desperate hand, fingertips digging into his hair as he shoved beer bottles out of his way with his other. He could hear the archangel fighting against him, struggling to escape his cage, but he still couldn't see anything. He couldn't find the door, working his way blindly through the bar by the virtue of an outstretched arm. The pounding surrounded him, taking him over and threatening to suffocate him.

Dean growled, yelled in frustration, "Where is he!"

The bar flickered into view as he stumbled toward the wall, knocking over items as he continued to search for the walk-in fridge, the door precariously locked with a screwdriver built of willpower. The door was here somewhere – he  _knew_  it was. He just had to find it. If he could find it he could reinforce his hold and keep Michael inside. He had to. He couldn't let him out. He could handle the pain of this burning fire through his head and his body. Nothing else mattered except that door. Except keeping his brother, his family safe.

He pushed off the wall, staggered as the room around him flickered, shifting between the bar in his mind and the infirmary in the bunker. He faltered at that, lost some more of his tenuous hold on Rocky's. Something was wrong. Something had to be, if they in the infirmary. Someone was hurt, and it was his fault. He'd hurt someone. Oh, God, he'd hurt someone. He should never have let Sam talk him out of going into the Mal'ak box.

"Dean, stop it!"

His brother's voice cut through the noise, pulling the bunker into sharp focus.

"It's me. You're in the bunker!"

"I know where I am!" Dean roared, pressing a hand against the table in an attempt to balance himself. The fiery pain was receding, leaving behind a scorched, hollowed-out feeling that was rapidly spreading through his limbs. "That's not—"

That's when he realized the pounding had stopped. He hadn't noticed – how had he missed . . .

"Dean?"

The sudden silence in his head was nearly unbearable as he found the door Michael had been locked behind.

Dean blinked, turned slowly toward his brother. "He's gone." The door was broken off the frame, kegs and anything else the archangel had found to throw in the small area laid strewn across the floor like casualties of a hard-fought war. "Michael . . . he's gone."


	2. Collateral Damage

It was the silence after a storm that was always the loudest, that prolonged absence of sound when the world took a deep breath and attempted to right itself. That sort of stillness had a physical presence that pressed in, surrounded, and threatened to drown you with its soundless, deafening, roar.

The non-stop pounding that had been beating inside his head for well over a month was gone, and the silence it left behind was just as painful. Suffocating him, trying to pull him under.

Exhaustion was quickly flooding the areas where Michael used to be, causing his thoughts to become slippery, chaotic. His mind was filled with so many conflicting thoughts, he was sure his skull was about split in half. Of course, the whole having his face smashed against a wall might have had something to do with that feeling.

Guilt, relief, horror, elation, exhaustion, anger, dismay – they all warred for top billing, mixing and swirling together in a volatile combination that sent his stomach rolling, his head spinning, and his heart thudding painfully in his chest. Through it all, the thoughts wouldn't stop roiling, surfacing long enough to steal his breath before disappearing back into the rolling abyss.

_Jack is himself again_

_Six hunters are dead._

_Michael is gone._

_Six hunters are killed._

_Sam's okay. Cas, Jack, Rowena – they're all okay._

_Six hunters just had their eyes burned out._

_I survived._

_They didn't deserve to die, not like this._

_Six more are dead because of me._

_It should have been me._

"Jack, you're . . ." Sam's voice sounded warbly and distant. Some of his words faded like a badly tuned radio, like they were coming through wrong. He could hear Jack's response, heard the explanation but he couldn't really understand anything beyond,  _Michael is dead._

Dean threw out a hand as the bunker tilted sharply. The ache in his head ratcheted up a few notches and his stomach rolled with the room. Suddenly his brother was in front of him, Sam's hand gripping his arm. The contact was probably the only reason he was still standing.

"Dean." Sam's voice finally cut through the silence, making contact and drawing his slow, weary gaze. "Dean, you okay?"

_No. Not even close. I'm alive and six more are dead. It should've been me._ But that's not what he was supposed to say, was it _._ "I'm fine." Those were the right words. Not the true words, but the right ones. The ones that were expected of him, the answer his brother was really asking for.

Sam made a face, lips pressed in a tight line and brow furrowed tightly.

Dean frowned, wavered in his brother's grip. Did he not say the right thing? Was he supposed to say something else? He was sure that was the right answer.

"Cas?" Sam turned to the angel to his right. "Can you—"

Cas nodded and extended a hand, clearly intent on healing his concussion. Dean leaned back, out of reach. He wanted to tell the angel not to heal him, that he didn't deserve it, not after this. He wanted to tell Cas that he  _needed_  the pain, needed the nauseating spikes shooting through his head, because the pain was grounding him, giving him something to latch on to so he wouldn't have to think about other things. But he didn't know how to say the words, not into a formation he and Sam would understand.

He was too slow, and in an instant the gash on his head was sealed. The fire that had throbbed behind his eyes cooled, and Dean was left with the silence.

The sudden change stole what was left of his precarious balance. Dean's knees buckled, and his brother's hand tightened around his arm as another bracing presence joined him on the right side.

"Whoa, Dean. Hey." He was shifted, man-handled. The backs of his knees collided with a chair and he went down, falling heavily into it.

Sam knelt in front of him, lips pressed once more into a tight line as he appraised Dean, then he looked over to the angel still standing next them. "Cas, can you and Jack . . ." He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to; even Dean, in his suspended state of quasi-awareness, understood what he was asking.

_Can you take care of the dead?_

_Can you clean the blood?_

_Can you bury our friends?_

_Our family?_

They must have agreed on a course of action, because the next thing he knew, Sam was tugging him to his feet with a quiet but firm, "come on, Dean" and pulling him from the room.

Dean locked his knees, planted his feet. "No." He pulled his arm from his brother's grasp, overbalancing and nearly ending up flat on his ass for the effort.

"Dean?" Sam stopped, his hand hovering in the air between them. He wasn't quite touching him, was giving him space but was ready to catch him all the same.

He shook his head. "No, I need to . . ." He looked around the room, to Mark and David slumped over the table, to Ava lying just inside the library and William on the stairs below, to Grayson sprawled below him and finally to Maggie, who'd survived the apocalypse and rabid vampires, who'd been killed by Lucifer and brought back, who'd stepped up when she was needed and led a group of hunters to try to stop Michael's army, only to be killed because Dean couldn't keep it together.

"They deserve a proper funeral. A hunter's funeral." Dean ripped his eyes away from Maggie, desperate to look somewhere else – anywhere else – but the entirety of the room was covered with casualties and blood.

"And they will, Dean. But you're exhausted, I mean—" Sam threw a hand out in his direction, tilted his head. "—you're barely standing, man."

"This is my fault."

"Dean. . ." Cas moved from behind him, coming into view. "I told you, this is not on you. It's on us."

"No." Dean held the angel's gaze for a long moment before turning back to his brother. "I let my guard down. I should've. . ." he trailed off, pressing the tips of his fingers against his forehead and closing his eyes against the slow, lazy spin of the room.

"Michael was pounding on that door nonstop for over a month," Sam said. "You haven't been sleeping. Hell, you've barely been eating. Dean, you couldn't keep that pace up forever. No one could."

Dean wanted to rail against his brother's words. Just because his failure had been inevitable didn't make it okay. It didn't absolve the blood of six more people on his hands. But his already depleted reserves were waning quickly, and right now he just needed his brother to understand that he had to do  _this._ "Sam, please." His voice cracked around the word. "I have—" he stopped, swallowed around the growing lump in his throat. "I need to be a part of this."

That look was back on his brother's face, the one with the pressed lips, furrowed brow, and heartbreak. "Okay." Sam gave a small nod. "Okay."

Dean's shoulders sagged in relief before he squared himself back up. He moved to kneel beside Maggie's still form and slid his arms around her, tucking her head against his shoulder before lifting her off the ground.

00000

Sam left Cas and Jack to cut the wood for the sizeable pyre, while he and Dean brought the bodies out, one at a time. Even Rowena helped, laying sheets out on the ground then reverently wrapping each hunter before they were moved onto the pyre. The five of them stood silently as the fire grew, spreading hungrily until they could no longer see the bodies lying within.

Jack had attempted to heal them, but even he couldn't undo the damage the archangel had wrought. It didn't seem fair that the kid could kill the most powerful archangel they'd ever faced but didn't possess the power to save his friends. He knew Jack was feeling guilty over it, but he'd let Cas talk to him, knew the angel would be better at empathizing in this particular moment. Right now, Sam's bigger concern was his brother, who had disappeared shortly after the fire outside had burned down to embers.

He stopped by Dean's room and was troubled to find it empty, the bed untouched. Sam looked up and down the hallway, trying to guess where his sleep-deprived, exhausted brother may have wandered off to. For the first time in what seemed like a very long time, they didn't have an enemy to worry about. No one was trying to end the world, and none of them had an egg timer on their shoulder ready to go off. They had no immediate, imminent concern, just run-of-the-mill monsters and demons. He could easily picture Dean trying to find another hunt, eager to bury himself in work, but Sam had just passed through the library and it was empty.

He thought about the places in the bunker that Dean might have wandered to in a wounded, shattered stupor. Sam briefly considered just letting his brother be, allowing him time alone to process what had just happened, both the good and the bad. But he also knew his brother, knew how hard he'd take the deaths. Especially with nothing to hit or shoot to distract him from it. So, Sam backtracked through the bunker, taking another long look in the library, when he noticed the light to the garage was on. He frowned, headed in that direction and he found his brother sitting in the Impala behind the driver's wheel. The car was silent, and Dean didn't appear to be getting ready to go anywhere.

Sam walked carefully up to the opposite side of the car, not wanting to startle the hunter, before pulling the passenger door open and leaning in. "Hey, Dean."

"Mm," Dean grunted but kept his eyes fixed on the something in front of him, something far beyond the windshield and concrete walls of the bunker.

"What are you doing out here?" Sam asked. There was a glass of whiskey in his brother's hand, half-empty. He couldn't be sure whether his brother had drank half the glass or had only poured half a glass and hadn't managed a drink. Either seemed equally plausible, given the state of things.

"S'a free bunker."

Sam tipped his head. "Yeah, but it's freezing out here, and you should really get some sleep."

"Yeah," Dean dropped his eyes from whatever he was seeing down to the glass in his hand, shifting the amber liquid a bit before taking a slow drink. "Yeah."

Sam waited another long moment, watching Dean closely before realizing was going to take more than a gentle nudge to move his brother to elaborate further. He straightened and closed the door, moving around to the other side and opening the driver's door instead. "Come on, Dean." He tucked a hand under his brother's arm, pulling gently but firmly.

Dean looked up at him and for a moment, his gaze was open, the pain and anguish showing clearly before he blinked, and it was all gone. "Yeah," Dean said once more, finishing the whiskey off in one large swallow that left Sam wincing. His brother then allowed himself to be pulled from the car and guided down the hallway then deposited on his bed.

Sam worried at his lip, concerned with how pliant his brother was being, hoping it was just the whiskey and sleep deprivation. "I'll be right back, Dean."

He walked the short way down the hall to their now-destroyed infirmary, something else that would need cleaned up and headed for the cabinet, routing through bottles of old prescriptions and stolen pills, pulling out a nearly empty bottle of Temazepam. He crushed two pills on the counter and dumped them into a glass of water, mixed it as thoroughly as he could. Sam had no doubt his brother would fall asleep with little problems once he let himself, but this would ensure he stayed asleep, at least for a little while.

Sam returned to Dean's room, unsurprised to find his brother still dressed sitting on his bed, head resting in his hands.

He crossed to the bed, holding out the glass. "Here."

Dean looked up, hesitating before taking the water, but he did, staring sightlessly at the glass.

Sam took a deep breath before sitting on the bed next to his brother. He wasn't used to seeing the man like this. Dean had always been good at bouncing back from every hit he took. He didn't always land on his feet, but he had the means to get there pretty quickly. It was something Sam had come to depend on, and he found himself hoping once more, if not selfishly, that this was simply a side effect of the past several sleepless weeks.

"You know," he started hesitantly. "No one blames you for what happened."

Dean pressed his lips, his gaze still on the glass. "Yeah, well, I blame me so . . ." He looked away, downing the water in one go.

Sam frowned at that but knew there was nothing he could say that would change the way Dean thought, not when it came to blaming himself. It was like a dog chasing its tail; he never got anywhere, and it just made him dizzy. He dragged a hand across his mouth, wishing his brother didn't always need to carry the world, and the dead, on his shoulders. He patted Dean on the shoulder as he stood up. "Get some rest, man."

**Author's Note:**

> Part 1 of a two part tag. 
> 
> I started a FB page at the insistence of my partner in crime where I may post snippets from chapters I'm working on, or updates. I think you can find it at https://www.facebook.com/nova.shepard.37


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